ArticleAlzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association2026
Outdoor extreme heat-related dementia risk and the role of socioeconomic disparities: evidence from 20 years of data on US older adults.
Article in Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionExtreme heat is increasingly recognized as a significant threat to brain health. However, human evidence from large, longitudinal studies remains limited. We examine whether outdoor heat exposure is associated with incident dementia and whether socioeconomic factors moderate this risk.
methodsLeveraging data from the 2000 to 2020 Health and Retirement Study (N = 28,512), we assigned census-tract-level 5-year exposure to the number of "Extreme Caution" (90°F to 102°F [32.2°C to 39.3°C]) and "Danger+" (≥103°F [39.4°C]) heat days, adjusting for moves. Fine-Gray subdistribution hazard models estimated dementia risk, treating death as a competing event.
resultsCompared with individuals with a low burden of "Danger+" heat (≤0.2 days/year), those with a moderate burden (0.4 to 1.8 days/year) and a high burden (≥7.2 days/year) had 14% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.01 to 1.27) and 23% (95% CI = 1.08 to 1.40) higher risks of dementia onset, respectively. Stronger associations were found among individuals in areas with high socioeconomic disadvantage and low central air conditioning prevalence. No associations were found for "Extreme Caution" heat. DISCUSSION: Outdoor extreme heat may represent an important environmental risk factor for dementia, particularly among older adults living in areas characterized by structural barriers to mitigating exposure. Our findings suggest that dementia prevention efforts should consider local heat burden and prioritize strategies to reduce cumulative thermal stress. Greater attention should be directed toward identifying populations facing socioeconomic and infrastructural constraints that may benefit most from targeted heat-mitigation resources and support.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.